Floating along...

Back in the land of the busy consumers, trying to readjust. I am looking out at another cool and rainy "summer" day in Rhode Island. (Photo of cold spring runoff still running off over the dam in Maine last week.) When our plane landed three weeks ago it seemed like only the portion of me that had fully arrived was the part that had her passport stamped. Slowly, slowly, the rest of me is starting to show up. But all seems a bit tilted. Walking the familiar sands of Second Beach which I have known and loved for over 40 years even seems a bit off. The color green dominates the landscape but it is not the same luscious green my eyes are used to watching explode in the tropical heat. The sky is blue and the clouds are white but neither are as brilliantly so. The color of the sand is brown-ish, definitely not the white shelly sand of Conchal or even the browner shades of Tamarindo. These sands have been formed by a different breed of elements tumbled smooth and tiny by the Atlantic, which is of a colder hue itself and feels less friendly to my bare feet. The shells I scan as I walk along are jingle shells, scallops and moon snails, not the puca shells, olives or screw augers I have perused on my beach walks in the previous months of this year. (Photo of moon jelly in much warmer waters.)

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I got in my Japanese-made mini van and gave thanks to the God of Craigs List that we were unable to sell it last year before we left, try as we did. Backing out of my brother's paved driveway for the first time onto a smooth road I said to the kids, "It feels like we are floating!" I count my blessings every time I get in it and scan the back-up camera, glancing at the kids in my rear view mirror with their alien head sets, silently tuning in to a movie. I adjust the lumbar support in my leather seat and think I could happily live in its heated and air conditioned comfort forever. This one vehicle offers more comfort and features than our whole house in Costa Rica. Arigato Toyota.

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Pressing "agree", I searched through the radio options and re-programmed my favorites on my car computer where they conveniently reside under the GPS map. Recalling how a radio search in Costa Rica often led to not even one station stop, I bid a fond farewell to Radio Doce and all those blasts from my past - it's National Public Radio from here on out for my brain stimulation as I float along oblivious to even the price of gas. As happy as I am to hear the familiar voices of Tom Ashcroft and Terry Gross providing intellectual fodder, I did have to pause and wonder at the all-to familiar commercial heard hourly - what exactly is the Herman Miller Aeron chair they are still incessantly advertising anyway? So I looked it up.

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Apparently it is the best office chair. Ever. It comes in your choice of nine fancy names for black and 13 fabric styles. You can swivel in luxurious ergonomic comfort on its sturdy graphite base, having just spent hundreds more dollars on your office chair than the average Nicaraguan makes in one year. Fabulous. I am getting one. Maybe two. It is difficult, after all, to decide between carbon or hematite. The website claims the name is synonymous with social responsibility so perhaps I can use the free shipping option to send the extra one to some poor Nico struggling to sit under his zinc roof at the Managua dump, Casa Dolce Casa, in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere. I can even order it in Espanol. Who knew there was a website called Sit4Less where the fabulously low "right" price is only $649?

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I might get the foot rest with built-in massage balls while I am at it. All that lower back support will eliminate my need for stomach muscles, which are hard enough to come by at my age with my overtaxed uterus which has been fully inflated seven times. We all know how a balloon looks after you blow it up repeatedly... And those massage balls will conveniently replace my need to actually get out of my fancy chair and take a real walk, say barefoot - on a beach. I could probably hang a picture of seashells above my desk or a verdant tropical scene, sprinkle some sand between my toes, and really get my money's worth. I could sit all day in virtual peace with true comfort only one of 103 revolutions of "geometrical tilt tension based on natural human body linkages" away. Wow. Finally a real life use of geometry. I knew I should have paid closer attention in tenth grade.

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Anyway, for now I will enjoy the lower back support of my heated leather minivan seat instead. It may not have a lightweight and breathable Pellicle fabric back to it but it does have arm rests. And it cost me over 60 times as much as that designer chair anyway.

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K3

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P.S. Okay history buffs, pay attention. Here's a newsflash from here in the smallest state with the maybe soon-to-be-shortened longest name.

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How many of you know that the Ocean State was granted its charter by King Charles II in 1663 to become the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations? Or that the latter portion of this auspicious title bears reference to the large land holdings on the mainland across the water from this fair island on which I now sit and type? Or that this island upon which I write is the original "Rhode Island" referred to in said charter? It was named the Island of Rhodes upon discovery by the Italian explorer Verrazzano Island 500 years ago because it reminded him of its namesake island back home in the Mediterranean. Roger Williams saw fit to change it to the Island of Rodes, dropping the "h" in reference to the Greek word meaning "roses" which he must have found here in abundance as Rosa rugosa, beach rose, still thrives here and sweetens our salty air. This island is now commonly called Aquidneck Island to avoid the inevitable confusion folks from afar understandably have regarding whether or not our little state is an island.

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Well, it seems some people are offended by the reference to the word "plantations" in our State's title. They consider it a throwback to slavery. And while little Rhody was indeed a major player in the slave trade and efforts are currently underway to make reparations for the vast fortunes amassed on that historic front by families like the Browns and DeWolfs, the word in this instance is actually innocent of all such connotations. However, our venerable leaders have voted to put the State-formerly-known-as ballot measure before us citizens re said moniker for next year's election. They propose we agree to become quite simply, the State of Rhode Island. Period. And the originator of the legislation has stated, "It's got nothing to do with Barack Obama." As if. While I am all for simplification, I do think this is taking things a bit far. Our little State has been well served by our big name for hundreds of years. I see no need to change that.

That's Bull....

Monday morning here in the tropics, kids at school, laundry is hanging, see it?, no, the pool is not running off the edge, that's just my angle today, stayed up too late watching "The Reader", need to have 10 posts to get on the ex-pat blog directory so stepping up the pace...and 9 and... Andy gone to the border to give them all our money and see if we can get the black panther back. When I say "gone to the border" think "gone to Hell" as that is the closest metaphor. Border towns are teeming, dirty, swarms of uncivilization that can instantly turn you into an obsessive compulsive anti-bacterial soap lover. Dehydrating yourself is the best border strategy so as not to need the "facilities". Hungry? Forget about it. Last time we went we came home with dirt even in our ears thanks to a constant barrage of windblown dirt and dust. Yuck. When Andy got there Friday he found a sticker on the truck window saying it was abandoned like an unloved pet and about to become the property of the aduana, translation: thieving tax agency, and I guess they would have soon given it to the employee of the month had Andy not shown up to visit. This in spite of the fact that it is impounded in their own secure lot where they put it and is accruing a daily fee! So, fingers crossed half-heartedly after 4 months and counting of false hope and premature labor-like anticipation.

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I heard on Radio Doce this morning that the March winds are here which is funny as I thought these were still the Papagayos minus the steroids but guess they magically morphed at some unknown transitional point, like maybe when the calender page flipped, hmm... One hit wonders heard lately that should have stayed locked in the archives include "Afternoon Delight", "My Baby Takes the Morning Train", "Fox on the Run", and "Roseanna". Others I could actually sing along with included Bread's "Guitar Man" and the not so old "Drops of Jupiter" so you can see the ratio is easily 2:1, cringingly horrible:happy to hear. I also heard that lame America song, whose dazzling lyrics include "Oz never did give nothin' to the tin man" and what the heck was that all about anyway? First of all, I always thought they said "Odds" until this latest "aha!" moment but whatever because it makes no sense either way and is a very dumb song that I never thought too much about. Tropic of Sir Galahad, say what? And speaking of when we actually used to say, "Say what?" as in "Rollercoaster, of love, say what?" Ha! I wonder if the Ohio Players are here in CR too! Remember sitting glued to the radio hoping they would play some favorite song and straining to hear the lyrics? I remember writing "Stairway to Heaven", my first book! And now you can figure all that blather out immediately as the internet posts them all, for better or worse. Hopefully this will be an added incentive to song writers to sober up and write some good stuff, all that hippety hop nasty crap not withstanding. Stay tuned for more blasts from the past. At least I will be in great shape for my 30th MHS reunion this summer! I wonder if my hair will still shape into wings... Say what?!

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Which brings me to my topic of the day, Bulls... Saturday nite marked the beginning of the next round of Fiestas which move from town to town. The last round were the Chrismas ones and now we are gearing up for Semana Santa, holy week. Not sure how they are Easter-like in any way, except perhaps for the prayers sent up by the bull riders and chinese food eaters. I took Micah to meet his friends and Eileen came along for her fiesta debut. We took up our position in the stands, which are constructed fresh for each town's fiesta and resemble those toothpick projects my kids had to make to see which design could support the most weight. People hang off and sit all along the fencing that comprises the bull ring itself and try to bravely kick the bull when it comes by and this fiesta crowd was particularly large, Villa Real being a bigger town, so that when the bull ran by the people lining the inside of the fencing all rose with synchronicity like a pop-up book or the wave at a sporting event! In addition to lining the fences, the inside of the bullring itself was filled with macho men with liquid courage, typically the local firewater guaro, coursing through their veins. There are usually some gringos in there and, this being Spring break time, there were a few tourists and college kids too. You could practically hear the scratching of their pens on the postcards home, "Dear Mom and Dad, ...gored by a bull..." All around the outside of the bull ring are carnival games, candy apples, flying swings, cotton candy, dancing parlors, fried dough, flying pigs, and your typical fiesta fare found everywhere else in the world, the only distinction being the language all the ex-inmate workers speak. One funny aside, under the "supervision" of his Dad, Isaiah spent all his money one night at the Brasilito fiesta on some crazy game and finally won a bottle of wine! He and his buddy Jackson, also clearly a minor, wandered the fiesta proudly with their prize alcohol for the rest of the evening and were the talk of the school as half the teachers were there too!

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So, the stage is set. Now for the action! The rider and bull burst through the gate where one of two things usually occurs. Either the rider manages to hang on for the allotted time to a simple rope tied around the bull's chest, digging a metal boot spike into the bull's side, enraging the poor beast who bucks and flings him around like a bad case of shaken baby syndrome. OR, and this is what the crowd really loves to hate, the bull succeeds in tossing that piercing pain in his side off his back. Once either outcome is effected, the bull might either stomp on the rider, impale him on a horn or the rider might manage to run off and crawl under the fence or is unceremoniously carried off and stuffed under the fence with some degree of injury or unconsciousness and little or no medical care. Once the rider is dispensed with, the bull continues to chase the macho men around the ring, snot flying everywhere, until the dancing horses enter and manage to lasso it into submission or the bull finds the open gate and runs off into the shoot and truck waiting to transport it to the next night's fiesta.

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The bulls were particularly fierce Saturday night and Eileen and I had watched a few dramatic rides, cold-ish Imperial cans in hand, waiting for the big draw of the night, Chichiri, one of the two most famous bulls in the Fiesta circuit, as he has killed two riders this year. It is difficult to survive a bull horn that enters your mouth and exits the top of your head. They had a brief intermission while they switched bull trucks with some typical colorful Guanacastican dancing and a school band playing whatever beat it could manage on the only two instruments available, drums and xylophones. The field cleared and the macho men all huddled around the gate dancing and slapping each other on the ass while watching up close for the next bull, then signaling its imminent arrival by running away to the other side as fast as possible, so reminiscent of Monty Python - "And brave, brave Sir Robin, he turned his heels and fled..." Out charged a big black bull with no rider! Sometimes this happens, not sure why, perhaps the rider figures out at the last minute that his life is worth more than $20? The bull started chasing after the macho men and had made his way to the opposite side of the ring when suddenly the lights went out in the ring, giving that black beast a distinct advantage! The lights outside of the ring were still on, plunging the bull into the shade of the toothpick stands, giving some real drama to those postcards from the edge! Sadly, they never managed to fire up the spotlights and the bull riding was prematurely ended before we could get our $10 view of Chichiri. We bravely rode the flying swings, screaming like teenage chicas, thinking of every carnival ride horror story ever told and Micah and Eileen dominated the bumper car scene before calling it a night.

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Before I conclude my Monday post, let me just take a minute to update you on that scorpion I evicted in my cleaning frenzy. No, he did not return to sting my nose or bite my toes, as over the hills we go... Oh, never mind. But, it turns out, he does have both a vindictive streak and friends in high places, namely our bathroom, as that same Friday night those ants-formerly-known-as-helpful whose praises I am sure I have sung in past posts were apparently persuaded to take up his charge and our bathroom burst into life with a veritable army of red ants in all shapes and sizes suddenly swarming in the shower, streaming in from the space where the ceiling meets the wall and flying around the house like a really bad segmented body horror show with a cast of thousands! What began as a simple idea for a shower before dinner (after Micah and I swam the beach and I finally figured out that if I swim with a mask and snorkel I don't have a post-swim allergy attack, aha!) became a night time of murder and mayhem and ladders and Andy filling the bathroom with a cloud of BayGon - the nastiest spray available in a convenient aerosol can and that can shrivel a tarantula in seconds, so I've been told. And of course the darned shop vac was clogged with concrete dust from earlier cleaning, ahem, causing Micah to curse with words like the back end of bull.... while cleaning it out so we could attempt to suck them up even tho half managed to be blown back out the other side, something my sweet Miele would never have allowed to happen. I swear I heard a scorpion snickering nearby while I brushed my teeth later, wondering how much residual BayGon was left on my toothbrush...

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K3

I found Karen Carpenter!

I may be dating myself for missing her, but I have found Karen Carpenter! No, that's not her, that's Bella...

I used to listen to the Carpenters as a dreamy-eyed pre-teen and thought it was so cool that she and her brother sang together and were both so, well, groovy together, while me and my brother couldn't even play a decent game of croquet without fighting over who got the green mallet and if I got to it first he chased me and beat me up in front of the neighborhood kids until I agreed to be orange. Green was the best, by the way, because green went last so could capitalize on all the balls already in play. And yes, my brother usually chose to send me across the street as opposed to taking two extra shots when he gleefully hit my orange ball, humility not being in his vocabulary.
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But back to the lovely romanic innocence of the Carpenters, "long ago and so far away..."! They are alive and well right here in Costa Rica on the only radio station playing US tunes with a couple regular DJ's who broadcast in English. Radio Doce is nothing short of a blast from the past and perhaps the past is all they can play legally within copyright laws, I don't know. I find myself singing along to tunes I have not heard in 30 years or so while driving Bella to school, speeding over the improbable background of rutted dirt roads as the faster you go the smoother it feels, always on the lookout for blind corners behind which may be mulling a whole herd of cows, some of whom may even be laying in the road depending on the hour. As I am usually late, I move rapidly along sans seatbelt, which would only serve to continuously tighten until I am inextricably pinned to my seat, clicking on the radio and becoming instantly transported back to my days at Gaudet Middle School. I might find myself back at the 8th Grade Prom while a blast of Summer Breeze fills my BeGo. Or I might find myself lamenting along once again with the woeful sounds of Karen herself singing "Don't You Remember You Told Me You Loved Me Baby?" bringing my teenage angst and raging hormones right back while I belt out that heartfelt song along with her, "I love you, I really do," wondering if I had someone in my back-then self to feel so achingly for. Today she happily sang "Sing A Song" with all those adorable children in the chorus and I was so sure I could have contributed mightily to that, once upon a time in the back seat of our family station wagon. You would never imagine she had died so young and tragically to hear so much cheerful innocence.
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Hitting the power button for Radio Doce might bring me back to being both so cool and so insecure at Middletown High School on a different day. While I speed by the howler monkeys hanging in the trees overhead I find myself singing along with the Beatles to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, thinking in my surreal surroundings about the lyrics to this particular soundtrack and their trippy implications. A trip, indeed, glancing over my shoulder at Bella in the backseat wearing her rose colored glasses rimmed in pink sparkles which could have come straight from those decades gone by. And this just after picking up our German stained glass artist neighbor, Adrian, with his pony tail and sober for a change demeaner, it being morning and all, delivering him to the bus stop humming, "Do you Know the way to San Jose?"
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I might find myself transported back to my college days by Pete Townsend, singing along to, "Let My Love open the Door," remembering my boyfriend dropping me off for our final farewell before I left for a semester in England. He died tragically while I was abroad. This too, while digesting my usual fake breakfast that Bella serves me cheerfully each morning with my coffee (see photo), a brown plastic waffle I sometimes supplement with a perpetually over easy cloth egg on a pink flower-shaped plate with some plastic grapes and an orange or pear. Yummy. I guiltily sneak them back to her play kitchen when I return home, not sure what else to do after I pretend to eat them day after Groundhog-ish day, thinking I wish the real food would magically replenish itself over and over in my own play kitchen. That would be the kind of recycling everyone could embrace!
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So even though Andy and I sometimes draw straws to see who has to change out of their pajamas to make one of the four daily trips out to school, at least if I draw the short straw I have the anticipation of some time travel courtesy of Radio Doce to look forward to and accompany me on my journey. And sometimes when I pull up to Educarte or find myself at the entrance to the Country Day School singing "It's More than a Feeling" or some other Boston tune, thinking I am in the bucket seat of my '64 Dodge Dart or sitting under the stars on the beach of our Maine lake, I am confused for a moment. But the palm trees and blast of heat when I open my car door drop me right back into present day Costa Rica. Perhaps I should listen to some Tico tunes for a change.